Women, equality and brunettes

Women have been culturally, socially, economically, mentally suppressed by men for centuries. Aren't they expecting too much for all this to disappear in 40 odd years?

I was reading something today which highlighted how far women still have to go to acquire equality in, at least, Western democracies. In a lot of places around the globe they have even further to go; a lot further!

Despite enacting rafts of legislation, which make it illegal to discriminate against people based on gender, race, physical condition, age and/or the distance from your crotch to the ground, it hasn't actually seemed to have changed very much, in some respects it may have made matters worse. What it has done is drive the discrimination 'underground'; made it more subtle (sort of). Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting we repeal the legislation, it is necessary. What I puzzle about is: how do you change men's attitudes at a fundamental level and could it be done in the forty or so years since Dworkin, Millett, Greer et al first waved their bras in the air and demanded equality. (And no, that last remark is not sexist, it was the feminists themselves who used the slogan and it was meant to be extreme, being moderate seldom gets you anywhere.)

You see, the legislation is constantly being undermined by the media, the advertising industry. They continue to bombard their audience with a host of insinuations which simply perpetuate pre-1960s attitudes. Why are woman constantly referred to by their hair colour? As though this were their most important feature? Why does no word exist in English for a brown-haired man? Blond? Simply co-opted for men as it is the name of the hair colour, not a noun to denote the individual who is blond (adjective) as 'blonde' is. (The 'e' is there because that's what you do in French to denote an adjective defining a feminine noun and therefore the form of the noun you 'make' from the adjective becomes feminine.) Why do we not refer to men as 'a Brun'? Not too mention that brunette is a diminutive, a 'little brown (haired individual). And why don't the media talk of men as 'baldy'. Well they do, but only when trying to insult. Why does it not occur to them that brunette is just as insulting as baldy?

Well, unfortunately they do understand. Only too well!

Why is women's underwear still advertised on perfect '8's (don't know what the equivalent size is in the US) with long legs and no waist? Um, this is not the bulk of your buyers, guys. No, it's intention is (a) to make size 14 women who may have a gained a few inches over the years, haven't we all, feel inadequate but also to make them feel that if only they bought Sloggi underwear, Pretty Polly stockings or a Triumph Wonderbra, they'd suddently recapture an allure they've been deliberately made to feel they've lost and (b) to sexually tittilate men! Advertising hoardings are the modern day equivalent of the renaissance nude. The artist who created the painting in 1520 may have felt they were saying something about the essential nature of beauty but the men who bought them were most definitely not buying, commissioning, them for their intellectual worth! The sixteenth century's answer to hard core pornography was the nude! Just ask John Berger!

As MG may have made clear when he ruined my blog earlier in the year, it is hard for him to 'buy in' to such an idea since as a 'victim' of a sort of 'discrimination', it is hard for him to see others as anything else than simply other human beings; not male, not female, not Christian, not Muslim, not black, not white, just another person.

But western society doesn't want him to behave like that. It wants to plant ideas in his head that conform to whatever it is the 'ruling class' believe he should believe. And the ruling class is not the government nor the aristocracy. It is the vested interests that are neither elected nor accountable, for anything! Until you change them, or divest them of their power, you will change nothing at a fundamental level and change at a superficial level is not worth the paper it is not printed on.